


Limericks in Translation

by sobrecogimiento



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sobrecogimiento/pseuds/sobrecogimiento
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dean gets drunk, and decides to write Sam poetry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limericks in Translation

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after 8.03, but doesn't contain any real spoilers, just vague ones for what Sam did during hiatus.

Sam didn’t want him to go out tonight, but Sam can go fuck himself. Especially since he didn’t follow Dean to the bar down the street like he was supposed to—well, he said he was gonna stay in and dick around on his laptop (or at least that’s what Dean heard)—but that’s Sam-talk for “I’m gonna sit here and stare wistfully out the window like a Lifetime movie until I follow my brother’s excellent lead and do something less lame with my evening.” Or, that _was_ Sam-talk. Before exploding Dick and purgatory happened and Sam discovered the joys of dogs and regular sex (hopefully not together) and wanted to settle down with some stupid woman Dean’s never met and play house and put up Christmas decorations. Dean wishes his translation app worked on _that._

Now, all it means is that Sam’s the kind of asshole who left him to this all by himself, this being the strategic art of trying to draw a Devil’s Trap on the bar with shot glasses and condensation. It’d be awesome if the whole thing would stop moving, though. Looks like a year in purgatory fucked his old tolerance all to shit.

The bartender saunters to a stop in front of him, wiping a rag along the bar. “Why the long face, sugar?” she asks.

Dean smiles politely at her boobs, because they’re at eye-level and they’re very nice and he might fall off his stool if he leans back far enough to look her in the face. Then he pouts as her question sinks in. “My brother don’t love me,” he says morosely, sticking his bottom lip out for effect. 

“Oh, I’m sure he loves you just fine,” she says, resting her forearms on the freshly-cleaned surface. Dean can see her face, now, and that’s very nice, too.

He tries to smile again, and manages a halfway grimace before he gives up. “It’s always been me an’ him, you know?” he says intently, and the bartender nods. “What’s your name?”

“Carol,” Carol tells him, flashing a little grin of her own.

“Carol,” he repeats. “Like songs.” She laughs, and he goes on, encouraged. “Yeah, but. Me an’ Sam. We mostly been together since like, forever, drivin’ and workin’ and stuff. We drive a lot. For work.” He pauses to trace another five-point star in the condensation. “But I had to—I left. Was gone all last year, and I come back and he say he don’t want to no more. He wants to settle down, like, permanent.”

“Without you, huh?” Carol guesses. She’s got a wrinkle in her forehead like Sam does when he’s thinking. Dean wants to poke it, but his fingers are wet. 

Dean shrugs. “He says we want different things.”

Carol quirks an eyebrow. “And this is your brother we’re talking about?”

“Um, yeah?” Dean frowns. That sounds like trick question. Maybe Carol’s really a brother-eating monster, but he hopes not. She’s been nice so far, and he doesn’t want to kill her. Maybe he should have Sam look into brother-eating-related local deaths just in case. “I just dunno how to make him stay." 

“Maybe you should tell him how you really feel,” she advises sagely.

Dean beams. Nah, probably not a brother-eating monster. “Maybe I should write him a sonnet. He’s kinda a sap. I just never got that—whatsit—ambic polymer?”

“Iambic pentameter?" 

He waves dismissively. “Yeah, that. I can make rhymes, though. What’s another poem?”

“How about a limerick?” Carol suggests.

Yeah, a limerick. That sounds good. Dean can kick _ass_ at limericks.

*

“SAM!” Dean yells, bursting through the motel door and slamming it shut behind him. It’s dark suddenly, and he stops, blinking. That’s stupid. Why is it dark? Sam should make up for leaving him alone earlier and make it not dark anymore.

“SAMMY!” Dean calls more urgently. “SAM I AM GREEN EGGS AND HAM!”

The room floods with light, and Dean smiles. That’s more like it. Sam props himself up on his elbows from the far bed, scowls, and flops back down, throwing an arm over his face like those fainting ladies in old movies. Dean pictures Sam in a corset and a bustle skirt and giggles.

"Dean, it is three in the goddamned morning,” Sam groans. 

Leave it to Sam to sweat the small stuff, Dean thinks, rolling his eyes. “I wrote you a limerick!” he announces proudly.

“Oh god.”

Dean decides to interpret that as, ‘go on’. He clears his throat and recites,

> “I have a giant brother named Sam,
> 
> He’s built like the Hoover Dam.
> 
> I once pranked him with Nair,
> 
> And it took off his hair,
> 
> But I love him with everything that I am.”

There’s a long-suffering moment of quiet, and then Sam sighs, like Dean just told him he used up the last of the toothpaste instead of a poem that it took him an hour to write. “Go to bed, Dean,” he says. 

Yeah, bed. That sounds like a good idea. He strips down to a t-shirt and boxers and pauses between the two queens, swaying slightly. Sam’s bed sounds like an even better idea. It’s probably already warm and everything. 

“Dean! What the hell are you doing?” Sam demands in his best bitchy-little-brother voice at finding Dean sprawled across his chest. Dean loves him so much that it hurts, so he cradles Sam’s scrunched up, frowny-face between his hands and kisses him.

“Why aren’t I enough for you?” he whispers. Dean’s face feels wet, which doesn’t make sense since it wasn’t raining outside. Maybe the ceiling’s leaking. Or maybe it’s from kissing Sam, because his fast metabolism or whatever makes him get all sweaty and gross.

“You’re sweaty and gross,” he explains, wiping his face off on Sam’s shirt, and then he’s pulled into a hug so tight he can’t breathe. 

Sam kisses his hair, which feels nice enough that Dean forgets to mention the whole breathing problem. “We want different things,” Sam says, and fortunately relaxes the grip of his arms around Dean’s ribs. 

“Please don’t go,” Dean protests into Sam’s neck. “I’ll eat you up, I love you so.”

Sam huffs. “Did you really just quote _Where the Wild Things Are_?”

“It’s a bedtime story,” Dean says. “We’re in bed.” Besides, he’s clearly in a rhyming mood tonight, and Sam used to love that book. What’s his problem, anyway?

“Ok, Dean,” Sam replies indulgently, and reaches over to turn off the light, which shifts Dean so he’s laying more on the mattress than his brother. He’s not too happy about that development, but his limbs feel too heavy to move.

Dean’s still bothered that Sam didn’t like his limerick. Maybe he should have gone with the sonnet, after all. “Write you a sonnet next time,” he promises.

“Sleep,” Sam orders, but he squeezes Dean’s hand beneath the covers, which he’s pretty sure is still Sam-talk for thank you. He smiles happily and nuzzles Sam’s shoulder, and that’s the last thing he knows. 

*

Dean wakes up with a monster hangover just as Sam’s getting out of the shower, chokes down the water and aspirin on the nightstand, and spends the day driving and glaring at the world from behind dark sunglasses. Predictably, he claims not to remember a thing from last night, in that particular way where Sam can tell he does and would rather bite off his own tongue than talk about it.

And as for the paper napkin with a barely-legible limerick that Sam salvaged from Dean’s coat pocket? Well, he’s entitled to his secrets.


End file.
